Oh well then why wait for the techicality of an inauguration to declare the Obama administration a resounding failure and a cruel betrayal of trust?

PW @ 59:

Heh! Exactly.

Naomi Kline, via THE NATION: In Praise of a Rocky Transition :

The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington’s handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.

(…)

Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country’s banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, “Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending–for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc.–is a violation of the act.” Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.

Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.

Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. “There is only one president at a time,” we hear from Barack Obama. That’s true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama’s ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama’s renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.

Yes, there is only one president at a time, but that president needed the support of powerful Democrats, including Obama, to get the bailout passed. Now that it is clear that the Bush administration is violating the terms to which both parties agreed, the Democrats have not just the right but a grave responsibility to intervene forcefully.

(…)

If you don’t believe me, believe her… she’s hit nail on head for a long while now. Again, things unravelling fast, consequences are dire, there’s no help on the way and most of the public has no idea what’s going on.

Kline’s summary:

There is no way to reconcile the public’s vote for change with the market’s foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks. The good news is that once it is clear that the new rules will be applied across the board and with fairness, the market will stabilize and adjust. Furthermore, the timing for this turbulence has never been better. Over the past three months, we’ve been shocked so frequently that market stability would come as more of a surprise. That gives Obama a window to disregard the calls for a seamless transition and do the hard stuff first. Few will be able to blame him for a crisis that clearly predates him, or fault him for honoring the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. The longer he waits, however, the more memories fade.

Indeed. I think she understates things.

Obama has said (paraphrase)…
* in response to question of hazard being prez in these perilous times: “This is when I want to be president”, alluding to tackling big problems.
* All the “change” stuff
* re: TARP & Detroit, his handlers leaking on why he’s on the sidelines: “we want to own the solution, not the problem.”

Kline’s right. Obama’s signals are very worrisome, because they contain no indication anything meaningfully corrective is on the way. His back channel push for GM bailout… fine, ok. That’s what, +/135,000 jobs… less than 1/2 what it was 2 years ago. But GM has been losing market share for 15 yrs, accellerated last 1/2 dozen or so. They spent huge $$ lobbying K-Street to block cafe standard increase… successfully. Now Obama wants to give ‘em $$ to reverse that.

Fine, ok.

But none of this is systemic reform, transformation… (???) or even indicative/suggestive of it. And w/out that, it’s not going to matter what happens to GM ’cause we won’t have an economy capable of supporting them.

As I said, I walked the streets, worked the phones, ran 1/2 dozen precincts for Obama. He won me over, I’m enthusiastic and I believe in him.

But I’m not seeing anything from them addressing our cascading economic failure… nothing. I think you all… blogosphere/Marcy et’all would do very well to put some of the same scrutiny on this thing they’ve put on Bush’s many crimes, ’cause if he doesn’t get this right this last election isn’t going to mean squat.

If your readership doesn’t understand severity of current economic peril, then get ‘em up to speed: they need to know.

It’s past time for Obama to step into the shoes he asked to fill, and at least give some hints. So far, seems he wants to avoid those shoes.

I’m very concerned.

If I didn’t like Rahm Emanuel and wanted to lure him from a very safe and very powerful congressional seat into a job that I knew would destroy him in two years or less, I’d do just what Obama did and pick him for Chief of Staff. Of course, Obama will have to put up with him leaking like a sieve for those two years, but if he makes sure that Rahm isn’t privy to anything Obama wants kept on the QT, everything should be fine.

Oh well then why wait for the techicality of an inauguration to declare the Obama administration a resounding failure and a cruel betrayal of trust?

I am not saying what you imply, I hope you take me at my word. I’m feedback similar to yours in the few forums (web/NM DNC) where I have conduits to sound alarms, which I have done in recent days.

It worries me that a well earned post election euphoria, especially after exhausting last 8 yrs, is enough for a lot of engaged BO supporters. Seems to me experience instructs otherwise: dems have different ways of fucking things up than Repubs, but certainly capable of doing so.

What I described above… rapidly cascading economic failure, is a fact. That everything from a rapidly dwindling tax base, evaporating domestic investment, and +/- $50t of WS paper distributed around the globe being redeemed at less than $.10 on the dollar… it’s real as rocks. That Fed/Treasury has thrown

We’re broke. The US is completely broke… worse actually, we’re upside down in a big way. We are square in the eye of an emergency. The sea is on fire, and there’s more alarms than can be counted. And it’s burning very, very fast. And there’s no help on the way.

With all due respect, your comment (wait ’till innaugeration) is akin to accepting, as response to “sea on fire” analogy, that the fire department is out of the office today so please call back tomorrow.

I want Obama to succeed… in the worst way, I want that. I want it for him and his family, for all he and his campaign has symbolized, for the country and for all who pounded pavement to get him elected. I really do.

But given very, very small voice that’s mine… and especially seeing last 8 yrs how fast and thoroughly things can go bad, I’m gon’a do whatever I can to steer thing where they need to go.

He’s sending worrisome signals, and they’re contrary to image he’s convinced me is real. If this is best he’s got, it’s not going to work… it’s not going to get done what needs to get done.

EW @ 45

I can’t promise you what his policies will be–we really do need to wait, firstly for the policy-making staffers, and then for the actual policy.

First, so I’m not misunderstood, there’s few (if any) progessive bloggers I respect more than you. I can’t be more sincere then that.

So with that said…

1: he’s already announced some policy:

– new $200-300b “stimulus”
– support GM (Ford Chrysler?) w/some sort of cash infusion
– MC tax cut etc. etc.

This is nice stuff that we aren’t even close to being able to afford. I’ll be all for it if he gets economy on worthwhile track and we regain ability to produce substantial real value on US shores. Long ways to go there, however.

But what most bothers me in what you’re saying: he needs staffers so they can tell him what his econ policy is going to be.

Through looking into this guy a lot, investigating all kinds of stuff from his old lectures I was able to dig up to details/writings/speeches of his econ team… there’s all kinds of explicit reason to believe he’s been engaged in what it’s going to take economically, and engaged for a long while… at least since 2/’08. I have a well developed concept, based on all this, that he’s applied both his admirable intellect and advice from a good team to the issue of addressing just what change means, how he’s going to implement it, and what kind of vision he has for this.

If, as you say (or at least imply), this has not been incubated for some time, then I’m even more concerned.

He’s got a very narrow window… he just does. He’s got a public that is generally poorly informed: the specifics of went wrong, the precise nexus of fraud, how it was empowered by Bush WH (I have +230 links of incidents where Bush and/or Delay appointed some industry rep/lobbyist/lawyer to write their favored legislation, ushered it through congress, and said rep returned to reap the rewards upon passage… many, many of these facilitating conditions that have brought us here) and repub congress/K-street… the whole “shit pile” as you call it.

Most of Joe-The-Public is oblivious to this.

Whole lot of folks bet on Obama because of “change” and “hope” w/out a clue about the underlying conditions generating desperate situation for which they want these virtues implemented. And they’ll jump ship for some winger rag talking point selling more Reaganomics snake oil if they don’t get some change. And as I say often and loudly in this thread an elswhere, US economic failure is a cascading condition of most serious magnitudes, and it’s not gon’a sit around waiting for BO to get his shit together.

He can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. I hope you’re wrong about maturity of his ideas & dependence of mostly WS/DC vets to develop them.

If that is the case, I will consider myself bamboozled. Again.

I hope that progressive community, especially hi-plane well informed and thoughtfull ones such as EW have not adopted a notion that the dems have healed themselves all of a sudden. I agree that we’ve elected more higher quality, competant people in last 2 elections. But only just getting started AFAIC. Webb voting for last FISA bill one good example.

Senate session after 2k election fiasco began w/dems making deal to share power while giving up right to investigate that thing on floors of congress, and AFAIC it was all downhill from there… they were, in a word, spineless and abysmal.

I’ve watched a lot of C-SPAN hearings on TARP approval and WS meltdown since. Some of congressional dems have demonstrated impressively to me, but whole lot of ‘em… whole lot of ‘em, literally do not know what a CDO is and they’re sitting on FINANCIAL COMMITTEES!!!

I would encourage folks to keep a close eye on things, collectively jerk a short leash when needed and stay vigilant. We’ve got a long ways to go.